I Ask You: What Album from 1985 Has Better Sound than Little Creatures?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

We’re huge fans of Little Creatures here at Better Records. When you hear one of our Hot Stamper copies you’ll know exactly what we love about it.

Not many records from this era sound as amazingly rich as this one, not in our experience anyway. (As I write this there are four Hot Stamper pressings from 1985 on the site, and one of them is Brothers in Arms, hardly anyone’s idea of audiophile quality sound I venture to say.)

[I was being much too harsh to Brothers in Arms above. The best pressings have superb — albeit modern — sound.]

The recording is simply outstanding — punchy, smooth & so ANALOG, with an especially beefy bottom end, the kind a good Big Beat Pop Album record needs. (For a reference think Get The Knack or Parallel Lines.)

The best copies boast the kind of tight, punchy, surprisingly deep note-like bass that absolutely makes or breaks the sound on Little Creatures. Without the proper bass foundation this funky beat-crazy Talking Heads album can’t BEGIN to do what it’s trying to do: get your feet tappin’ and your body rockin’ to the music.

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Louis and the All Stars – The Best of Louis Armstrong

More Pop and Jazz Vocals

  • A superb sounding copy with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • Both sides here are incredibly clean, clear, full-bodied and lively with lots of space around all of the players 
  • “The sextet, including veterans Peanuts Hucko on clarinet and Trummy Young on trombone, relaxes into a perfect New Orleans groove, allowing Armstrong to stretch out to especially good effect on the haunting dirge “St. James Infirmary” “

This vintage Audio Fidelity pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound. (more…)

David Bowie – Let’s Dance

More of the Music of David Bowie

  • With two excellent sides, this vintage pressing can rock with the best of them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s all here: huge amounts of solid bass, clear guitar transients, breathy, natural vocals, and jump out of the speakers presence and energy
  • A real Demo Disc on the right system – “Modern Love,” “China Girl” and the title track are knockouts when you play them good and loud
  • On a Hot Stamper pressing that sounds as good as this one does, Omar Hakim’s drumming will rock your world like nothing you have heard
  • Top 100, of course – Let’s Dance is one of the best sounding Bowie albums ever recorded – this superb pressing is proof
  • One of the best releases of 1983, although that may not be saying much, since by 1983 popular music was definitely headed downhill — Bowie himself would never again release an album as good as Let’s Dance

Bowie is without question one of the all time great frontmen and producers. This is his last good album and a Must Own for audiophiles, especially if you have big dynamic speakers. Like we say, with this one you are in for a treat.

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Taj Mahal – Recycling the Blues & Other Related Stuff

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • Taj’s 1972 release appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • The sound is huge – big, wide, deep, and open, with a punchy bottom end and rhythmic energy to spare, as well as cleaner, smoother, sweeter upper mids and a more extended top
  • “The first side features laidback in-the-studio work with some nice gospel-inflected back-up from the Pointer Sisters. The second… side offers a good look at Mahal’s stage show.”

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Lincoln Mayorga, Pianist – Reverse Your Polarity!

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

This Sheffield Direct-to-Disc LP is one of the top Sheffields.

Lincoln Mayorga is an accomplished classical pianist: this is arguably his best work. (I had a chance to see him perform at a recital of Chopin’s works early in 2010 and he played superbly — for close to two hours without the aid of sheet music I might add.) 

You might want to try reversing the phase when playing this LP; it definitely helps the sound, a subject we discuss below.

With the polarity reversed, this is a top quality solo piano recording in every way.

This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity.

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Letter of the Week – “Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Elton John Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it for sale on our site.

Our last Hot Stamper shootout was in 2022, if that tells you anything.

Hi, Tom:

Got a chance to try your Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road hot stamper, and wow! EJ has never been one of my favorite artists, my liking his earlier output to some degree, but in my opinion GYBR is his magnum opus and his high water mark, down from which he slid rapidly into mediocrity.

I have tried a number of pressings of this record and always found it to be a good, but not great, recording, which is a shame considering it is one of the few double LP’s extant without anything approaching filler material. So I tried my Direct Disk Labs version, which was OK, but sounded veiled compared to the MFSL version, actually not bad for one of their efforts.

But the cinemascape evolved entirely with the hot stamper, bringing these great songs to life in my listening room like few others I have heard. If you want to hear a demo disk performance of this record you won’t find it outside a hot stamper in my experience. EJ’s voice is front and center, rich and full, allowing me to hear every vocal inflection. I swear I could tell what EJ had for breakfast–eggs and chutney, even! Pianos were arrayed in space with the correct surface loudness, guitars crunched on Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, the drums on Jamaica Jerkoff were massive and dynamic, and the bass drum whacks on I’ve Seen That Movie Too had that sock-in-the-gut punch.

This hot stamper shows off the difference between a recording and a performance. Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk.

Roger

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The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides, here is an outstanding All Analog pressing showcasing the Stones at the peak of their rock and roll powers
  • “Love In Vain” is one of the best sounding Stones songs ever recorded – the acoustic guitar harmonics and the rich WHOMP of the snare prove indisputably that Glyn Johns is one of the engineering greats
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Top 100, 5 stars – Jason McNeil wrote that Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are “the two greatest albums the band’s (or anyone’s) ever made.” [Add Sticky Fingers to complete the ultimate Stones Trilogy.]
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969, one that should have a place in any audiophile’s pop and rock section

This is, in our humble opinion, the second or third best record the Stones ever made. (Sticky Fingers is Number One, and either this or Beggar’s Banquet comes in a strong second.) With this wonderful early domestic pressing we can now hear the power and the beauty of the recording itself, a fact that we consider the very definition of a Hot Stamper.

Killer Stones Sound

Both sides have more ambiance, more life, and more presence than you probably dreamed possible. Take the sound of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to pick just one example. The breathtaking transparency of this copy allows you to pick out each voice in the intro. The vocals on the other songs are no less present, full-bodied and breathy.

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John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Double Fantasy

More of the Music of John Lennon

  • With incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides, this copy is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • This vintage pressing has the Midrange Magic that’s surely missing from whatever 180g reissue has been made from the 46-year-old tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from those tapes)
  • 4 stars: “John returned in the last days of 1980 with Yoko Ono at his side and a deeper understanding of life and all its complexities… The music of Double Fantasy is a testament to a man who’d conquered his demons and had the love of a good woman to carry him through, and some of it is beyond words and cannot be explained.”
  • If you’re a John Lennon fan, this title from 1980 is surely a Must Own

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We Was Wrong about Mr. Fantasy

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Traffic Available Now

UPDATE 2026

For our newest take on the sound of the various labels and stampers for Mr. Fantasy, please click here. Years ago we wrote:

We used to think that The Best of Traffic had better sound, but in a head to head comparison with this very copy, we were proved wrong.

Big, full-bodied and lively, with huge amounts of space and off the charts Tubey Magic, the sound here is Hard to Fault.

This is one of the best sounding Traffic records ever made. Musically it’s hit or miss, but so is every other Traffic record, including my favorite, John Barleycorn. The best songs here are Heaven Is In Your Mind, Dear Mr. Fantasy, and Coloured Rain. The first of these is worth the price of the album alone, in my opinion. It’s a wonderful example of late ’60s British psychedelic rock. (more…)

Biggles Let Us Down on this Pressing of Who Are You

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

We described a recent shootout winning pressing this way:

This copy has the Glyn Johns big, bold sound we demand from this famous producer/engineer.

Forget the domestic pressings, forget the DD Labs Half-Speed, forget whatever lame reissues have come or will come down the pike – if you want to hear this album right, a Hot Stamper British pressing is the only way to go.

The title song sounds amazing on this killer Triple Plus side two – the dynamic power of the recording comes through loud and clear.

Of course, not all stampers are hot enough to win a shootout. This British A3/B2 cut by none other than Biggles was judged to have middling sound quality.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good sounding a recording Who Are You can be on the best pressings.

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